Classical homeschooling in Southern California

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

The Safari Park in San Diego is one of my favorite places to go with the kids. It’s one of the few places that I feel comfortable handling all three children by myself, no friends or family have to come too! (Can’t say that about Disneyland who has very few rides that allow ALL of us to ride together). We actually renewed our passes last week on the spur of the moment trip! I’m so excited since it’s been a long time we’ve been there.

Starting last week, the day AFTER we went, the Butterfly Jungle opened for a limited time. I know we’ll go back in the next few weeks just to see that! But if you can’t make it before the Butterfly Jungle closes its doors, there’s still plenty to do! We rarely plan specific things to do, or times to be places. We are much more of a go with the flow type family. A friend of mine offered us great advice once when we went to Disneyland together and I apply it to any type of large destination that I know we won’t be able to get done in one day. I tell each child, “Pick one thing that you want to do while we are here”. Green Bubbles wanted to stay for the cheetah run and Little Miss wanted to see an ostrich. As long as I made sure we did those two things, I know we would have a good day.See the cheetah? I highly recommend staying for the cheetah run at 3:30pm. We usually don’t go looking for shows, but this was just cool to see. Get there early to make sure you have a space near the fence to see. We didn’t, but thankfully he ended up doing a second run and many people left in between the two runs so we had a great spot the second time around.We always stumble onto cool things going on throughout the day as well. On the way out we saw them pull out the African Bullfrog for his weekly feeding. The zookeeper talked the entire time, telling all the kids about what he ate, how often, where they lived in the wild, how they needed to be kept moist, and many other facts in a conversational way. After watching him eat his dinner, she held the frog out so the kids could see it closer and get a great photo op! There are numerous keeper talks all over the park. Again, we don’t look for these but when we stumble upon them the kids always find them interesting. The talks near the front of the park allow you to get up close to the animals and ask questions. We also caught the keeper talk with the elephants! It’s a great chance to ask any questions. My kids only interest seemed to lie with the baby elephants this trip. They asked the keeper how old the baby was, her name, and if there were any other babies. And since it was a hot day, the elephants were enjoying the pool. We go to see the mama spray water through the air and the ‘baby’ submerged herself under completely, not even her ears were poking out. And because this zoo knows small kids need hands on fun and plenty of breaks, there were plenty of opportunities for play. The kids climbed into an animal den, tried on bat fox ears, pretended they were bats, played on playgrounds and ran through the splashpad, and since the day we went was quite warm already, Green Bubbles decided to get extra wet! We even went on the African Tram ride, free for members.